


In Flagrante Delicto

by hakura0



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M, M/M, Multi, Suicide, and then come the fic, character death but come on it's preacher, jesse has a plan, they all live happily ever after other than the kid thing not happening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:49:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22478953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakura0/pseuds/hakura0
Summary: The fire doesn't make the news. It burns too fast and hot for smoke, to leave more than a lingering scent of charred flesh. Separate piles of ash and clothes on the abandoned rooftop that last long after the sun sets again.Eventually, the rain washes away the ashes. Eventually, the building is turned into luxury industrial lofts and the cloths thrown unceremoniously away.
Relationships: Jesse Custer/Tulip O'Hare, Proinsias Cassidy/Jesse Custer, Proinsias Cassidy/Jesse Custer/Tulip O'Hare, Proinsias Cassidy/Tulip O'Hare
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technically it's Cassidy who dies first, and Tulip second. Because some stories don't change. Because technicalities have their place in the universe.

Tulip dies third, too.

She's still amazed, somehow, at this 'being an old lady' thing, still never expected it. It's all dumb. Age, disease, something opportunistic, just enough that stubborn wasn't enough, that the O'Hare curse won. Cassidy asks to talk to her alone, and Jesse almost doesn't let him. Thinks back to the way he held him back once upon a time as she bled out, to that look he started getting sometimes, when he and Tulip had gotten their first gray hairs, their first signs of wrinkles. He lets him.

It’s a few minutes later that Cassidy leaves the room, forearm rubbing over his eyes, muttering something that sounds like "I can't," and not stopping.

"Think he'll forgive me?" Tulip asks, something soft in her eyes, in her voice when Jesse lets himself back into the room, to her side.

"He will," Jesse tells her without hesitation, sitting at the edge of the bed and holding her hand. "Gotta forgive himself, too. That one...” He makes a doubtful noise.

"Don't you blame him for not doing it anyway," She warns, and Jesse shakes his head.

"Nah." A pause. "Not really." Tulip smacks him, and he laughs. "You would've had a pretty long time to forgive us." She hits him again, harder, and his laugh is harder to match. Their eyes meet and she smiles just a moment despite herself, then she closes her eyes and they remember where they are.

"You'll take care of him?" Tulip asks, and Jesse kisses her hand.

"Of course." It's silent again, for a long moment, and Jesse's brows crease.

"You should go," Tulip tells him, her hold on his hand only loosening marginally. "Some things, a lady needs her privacy for." She tries to smile, despite the weakness in her voice, the look in her eyes.

"I don't care," Jesse tells her, simple. "I promised you till the end of the world, and I intend to keep that promise, Tulip O'Hare."

"Till the end of the world?" She asks, and for a moment it's as if it's a lifetime ago, and it's not just the Tulip in front of him asking. It's every time she's asked before, every desperate attempt at reassurance. It has to be right, and he knows that, and he wishes that Cassidy were there, but he knows why he isn't. Knows his own temptation to keep the words to himself, to draw out the inevitable as long as he can. To take that little return to playing God.

He doesn't.

Jesse Custer kisses her forehead and says the words, and Tulip smiles as she closes her eyes one last time, turning a kind of still that's been in his nightmares for a long time.

And outside the room, fingers digging deep enough into his palms to bleed, and the balls of his hands pressed hard against his eyes, Cassidy sits with his back against the wall, just out of view.


	2. Chapter 2

“You wanted me to do it, didn’t you?” Cassidy asks, as Jesse slides down the wall to the floor beside him. His hands are a bloody mess, and that doesn’t stop Jesse from taking one. From putting all of his focus on it, tracing crescent cuts and veins, and the lines of his palm with total absorption. “She would’ve bloody throttled me. Immortal life as a Golden Girl, can you imagine?”

“You were never going to,” Jesse tells him, still not looking up. The way he runs a finger along Cassidy’s knuckles makes him shiver for a moment. 

“I certainly was,” there’s a thickness in Cassidy’s voice, almost offense. “I couldn’t even stay in the damned room. Couldn’t even keep her company while-“ and there his voice breaks, and Jesse’s hands close over his.

“Shh,” is all he says for a moment, pressing his own eyes shut. There’s a part of Jesse that wants to reach out, put an arm around him. To offer some kind of support, explain why exactly it was alright. But just then, words and actions were equally out of his reach. Sucked, maybe, down a black hole somewhere in his gut. None of it would help, anyway, with what was actually wrong. This time, there wasn’t anything to be done.

He lets go of Cassidy’s hand just enough that he can lock back away everything but the amount of thought it takes to trace patterns on his skin.


	3. Chapter 3

They don't speak again, for something like a week.   
  
Not because either of them tries but because there's a smothering weight in the house. They're together, by all definitions but neither speaks, and Jesse can't help but think how strange Cassidy looks in all black.


	4. Chapter 4

"Shite, you need to eat, don't you?" is the way Cassidy breaks the silence eventually, as if they'd gone no more than the course of an afternoon.

"We should go out," Jesse offers, voice a little hoarse with disuse. They look like hell. They go anyway.

They keep going.


	5. Chapter 5

"What are you going to do?" Jesse asks him one day, when they're doing nothing more than drinking on the couch and watching television, Cassidy pressed almost painfully close to his side. 

"Well, after they catch this idiot," Cassidy gestured with his head to the television, "I'm going to take a piss." 

The look that Jesse gives him is scolding, but he puts his hand on Cassidy's thigh and squeezes, thinks for words. "After me." 

"I suppose if you’re going to insist, though I called it first”, he quips, offense mostly constructed. Jesse’s expression turns a hair softer, and damn if he hadn’t known him long enough to read it clear as day.

“Haven't thought about it," Cassidy tells him, with barely a moment's hesitation and a hand run over his face. "Don't see the point. You've got a good number of years on you yet, don't you? No point in worrying about all that, Padre, eh?"

"Cassidy." There's a patience in Jesse's voice that's almost worse than the alternative, and almost everything in Cassidy wants to get up and walk away from the conversation. From the idea. As if losing Tulip hadn't been fucking enough.

"I take it that means you're still not eager to become an abomination like yours truly?" Cassidy asks, his tone more joking than he was. 

"Thought about what it might've been like. If we'd both done it, years ago. Wouldn't have killed me, never being accused of being your grandfather. But now?" 

Now wasn't something that needed specifying. Now was the two of them, and a Tulip-sized hole in the air of the room. Now was the stranger Jesse saw in the mirror, and that damn look he could still catch on Cassidy's face sometimes when he thought he couldn't tell. Because Cassidy could see the sands of the hourglass falling right out and into the bloody trash. He can see the unknown getting closer. The one that wasn’t death necessarily, but life. Without the only people that had ever made him give enough of a shit to try. He was the unknown, really, and oh did it scare the ever-loving fuck out of him.

"And you want to know what I'm planning _after_." Cassidy doesn't mean to sound bitter, or hurt, but he does, because he is damn it. Because he doesn't want to keep losing. Because he doesn't want to paste on a smile and tell him he was thinking of going to Vegas, or Timbuktu. "I don't know. But that's not something new, is it? I'll find something, me."

"Long walk out of a small umbrella?" Jesse asks, enough blunt force in the question that Cassidy is fairly certain he winds up concussed. But Jesse meets his eyes, or tries to.

"Oh, no. That'd be a sin, wouldn't it?" His voice is careful, and whatever it is in his eyes isn't something that Jesse can quite manage to read. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"You're coming with me," Jesse tells him, in a voice that's only moderately more refusable than the one he used so long ago. "With. Not after. I'm going to be there."

"You've lost it," Cassidy accuses him, "You really have."

"No, I haven't," Jesse isn't smiling, not quite, but there is something sharp and bright in his eyes. "I promised Tulip I'd take care of you."

"So you want to watch me _die_?" Cassidy is incredulous, and concerned, and wary, and a dozen other things that Jesse doesn't blame him in the least for. 

"When the time comes we're both going to take everything we possibly can, and fuck on the roof of some abandoned building as the sun comes up."

" _Jesus _," Cassidy stood, looking at Jesse in something like horror even as his hand slipped from his leg. " _Jesus,_ " was all that he could come up with once he opened his mouth again. A moment of thought, mouth gaping, gained him, "That is one of the most supremely fucked up things I've heard in my life, d'you know that? I'm not doing that. I'm not going out as some kind of- of murder-suicide with a side of exhibitionism with you, fitting an end as it may be to everything else. Why would you even think-"__

__He was moving now, a fog having settled in over his brain and all the little horrors that Jesse was springing to life in there. His head shook, but didn't clear._ _

__"Have you ever burned before, Padre? _Really_ burned? Because I have, trust me, and you don't fucking want that. You don't want to be anywhere near that. I'm not killing ya by any means, but if I was I'd at least make it _humane_."_ _

__"You don't have the choice," Jesse told him, and when Cassidy opened his mouth he held up a hand. " _Personally_ , I mean. You don't have another way to go. I'm not letting you go alone. Also? This isn't about you killing me. As far as I'm concerned we're looking at a pair of suicides. The timing works out the best this way, too."_ _

__"Timing?" Cassidy asks, arms spread in exasperated exaggeration._ _

__"We both know it’s not the end, not really. I figure we get down there together, we either cash in a favor or kick a little ass, and then we go upstairs and call on Tulip." Jesse's voice said this was the sanest thing in the world, and something about that matter of factness made Cassidy laugh despite himself._ _

__"Just that easy, huh? Why not just tie me up and throw me outside, and die in your sleep? Are you just that certain that I'm damned?" There's pain clear on his face now, Jesse can see it when he gets a good look. Can hear it in his voice too._ _

__"No. But I'm not chancing it either. I’m not chancing _anything_ , Cass. I need you down there with me in case it comes to a fight. Don't make me beg." There was a hint of pleading there, and Cassidy covered his face with his hands, cursing loud into them._ _

__"This is shite, Jess. You know it is," Cassidy accused him, softer. He hated that Jesse had a point. Always had to have a point. It was a good plan, other than the hell part, and that part where Jesse wanted him to burn him to death. While he burned to death and the put some poor oblivious passerby in the mood for a good bit of barbecue._ _

__"I know," Jesse agreed finally, his voice plain. He hadn't reached out, hadn't offered anything to soften the blow of this, hadn't done anything but lay out his case. But he’d been a stubborn bastard for so long that Cassidy knew it wasn't likely to stop now. He hated him a little for it._ _

__"Alright," Cassidy told him, after a few moments that felt like forever and also no time at all, almost too quiet to hear. But Jesse heard. "Alright. And when, exactly, am I putting 'rotisserie roast' on my day planner? Did you have a date picked out already?"_ _

__"Well," Jesse started, getting to his feet finally and making Cassidy realize just how still he'd been. "You had to use the little vampire's room, but after that I think it's been long enough for her to miss us."_ _

__There's the slightest catch in his voice, the barest hint of fear flickering in his eye._ _

__"Bastard," Cassidy called him, half on instinct before the words themselves had even processed. He felt like he'd already known what they'd be. Now, he reached out, and Cassidy let him. Let him put his hand on the back of his neck and pull him in for a kiss, and kissed him back with all the vigor that he could muster. There were arms around him, a moment later, and he returned that embrace too, and he knew that in his heart he didn't want to know that embrace as one ounce weaker, didn't want to know the damned absence of it and what came after, and then he took one long, deep breath that hitched in his throat before he made himself speak the only damn words he could force himself to say. "I'm ready if you are."_ _


	6. Chapter 6

"Never thought I'd live to see the day Jesse Custer was shooting up," Cassidy remarks, his best attempt at wry in the early hours of the morning. They're on the roof, sunrise not quite close enough to touch and his heart is beating like a jackhammer even as he takes his own little cocktail.

"It's just the next day you won't survive to see," Jesse tells him, casual enough to make him curse.

"D'you know, I'm trying not to think about that part?" Cassidy scowls. "In fact, I'm trying not to think about any of this. Just lightening the mood a bit, aye?"

There's a noise as Jesse carelessly drops the empty needle, expression questioning. "Are you afraid?" There's a silence, and Cassidy isn't sure why. There's a denial in his throat but it won't come out. "Cass. We know what's next. We've got a plan."

"That isn't the part I care about, you tremendous idiot," his laugh was all frustration, no humor as he gestured towards Jesse. "You were right. How did you put it - 'after you?' After you it'd be a matter of time until I went for a bit of a tan. But I'm not exactly eager to put you in the ground myself, or to find out what you smell like when you burn, what you'll sound like. All things considered I'd rather not see the day you die, but it's a bit of a struggle right now not to just- just snap your neck and call this entire thing off. Mess around down here a bit longer while the two of you get caught up."

"You won't," Jesse tells him, his voice soft.

Cassidy closes his eyes, fighting back a sting in them, and shakes his head. "No," he agrees, a shade of hoarseness in his voice. "I won't. Because I'm a still a damn coward, deep down, and I’m not an idiot – I know I've got one chance to get through those pearly gates...and that's *you*. And as much as I'm sure I've earned it, I'm not looking forward to that whole eternal damnation thing, d'you know? Or...sulking about around here, wondering if it would be better or worse to just somehow forget the two of you. You've had me wrapped around your finger longer than you know, Padre."

"I know," his voice is soft still if firm. There's a certainty to it, like that same damn certainty he'd had when telling Cassidy about the plan God surely had for him once upon a time. "And I'm taking full advantage of it. Because *I'm* not chancing that I'll never see you again. I can't afford it. I _can_ afford a minute of hell that we don't even have to make it through."

"You're going to make me blush," Cassidy's voice was dry, the humor not sticking. He sighs, a wavering thing all things considered, and tries to swallow down the thickness in his throat. "You're sure you don't just want me to turn you? Procrastinate a couple decades more?"

"She's waitin' on us, Cassidy," Jesse tells him. "I don't plan on getting down off this roof. Is it gonna help you accept this, if I burn up myself instead?"

"Not really," Cassidy admits. "But I had to try. You could just... I don't know. Watch me, and then shoot yourself in the head?"

"No," is all that Jesse can say to that, though there's a small quirk at the corner of his mouth. "I've seen that fail. Come here."

There's no power in the beckoning, but Cassidy finds himself going anyway. Folding himself into the offered embrace, the soothing hands and the lips at his neck. 

The sky is growing pink, when hands move to clothing, to skin, and he's sure that neither of them should be able to get a rise in the circumstances but there they are, somehow. The human body. He closes his eyes, because he doesn't want to remember this moment, and mutters "I love you" in what breaths he can. Somewhere, he loses track of everything when things finally kick in, when the apex nears, and amidst it all there's heat.

Heat and a song he can barely recognize, being tripped over between gasps of air by an unfamiliar tongue. Something that's either a laugh or a sob catches in his throat, and then he does and there is no more singing, No more _good_. Just excruciating pain and a bare awareness of another voice mixed with his, of heat and light and noise and scent and then nothing.


	7. Chapter 7

And then it all starts again.


	8. Chapter 8

He doesn't know how long it lasts, but at the end of it he's standing in the middle of a room, his throat raw, and there, standing in the doorway, is the Jesse he remembers.

"Coming?" he wants to know, and Cassidy tries to force his brain to function. It's not a question that needs an answer, because he's already moving across the room. A moment later their arms are around each other.

"What’d that song ever do to you?" Cassidy asks him and the laugh is everything he remembers it as, and he can feel it there against his chest. "It’s not funny- you absolutely butchered the poor thing. Where would you even hear that? Jesus I’m going to think of _that_ every time I hear it now-”

He can feel Jesse’s smile against his neck. “Must’ve come to me in some sort of fever dream.” Jesse’s answer is dry, and his expression as he pulls away does nothing more than tell Cassidy that he knows damn well where he’d heard it before.

“You weren’t supposed to be conscious,” Cassidy all but mumbles, “see if I sing you anything else. Are we fighting?" he wants to know, once they’re separate save for the hand on his arm Jesse doesn’t seem to want to move.

"Not yet," Jesse assures him, and grins in a way that makes him think Hell should be relieved.


	9. Chapter 9

"She isn't going to forgive us, you know," Cassidy tells him, and Jesse smirks. He looks as if Cassidy had met him yesterday, for reasons they weren't likely to get an answer for. It didn't matter, anyway. 

He was glowing, practically, and it wasn't even the metaphorical Hellfire. They were waiting their turn for an audience, Jesse looking for all the world as if he owned the place himself.

"Well, _you_ , maybe. I'm the idiot that went along with it," It was strange to realize that he wasn't worried though, not really. There was something about Jesse's confidence that was catching. 

Jesse smiled like a couple of minutes ago they hadn't been in flagrante delicto in the most literal definition of the words, "Nah. She's got time. And the last time I checked the world still hasn't ended. Tulip'll know this was me, Cassidy. And she can't exactly hold a pair of promises against me."

"Oh, I think she bloody well can," Cassidy insisted, leaning over just enough to deliver the words directly into Jesse's ear like it was a secret. The bastard just grinned.


	10. Chapter 10

"Cassidy and I need to get upstairs," Jesse tells Hitler, his voice genially menacing. " _All_ the way up."

He doesn't ask if it's possible, doesn't consider that it isn't. He doesn't say 'or else'. He doesn't have to.

But he eyes the throne like a reminder of the fact that he'd been offered it once upon a time had just occurred to him, and he was beginning to reconsider his refusal.


	11. Chapter 11

"Are you okay?" is the first thing that Tulip asks, and it's a moment before Cassidy realizes she's talking to him. There's something purposeful in the way he can see her gaze avoiding Jesse, who's standing with his hands in his pockets, facing ahead other than the moment he glances aside, his gaze and his smirk screaming, 'I told you so.'

"Other than the dead thing?" Cassidy asks, and he laughs at the hit he half knew was going to be coming. "You look amazing," he blurts out after, before she can say anything else. It gets him pulled down for a kiss that leaves him breathless when she pulls away, which is an interesting thing to discover he can still be. "Better than I've been in a while."

"Good," she decides with a nod, and the word sounds half like a warning. "Tell Jesse-"

The words are barely out of her mouth before there's a hand on her shoulder, and Jesse puts his arms around her. It only takes a moment before she returns the gesture, and then the kiss. Almost no time passes before she's catching her own breath, half a dozen emotions playing on her face. "You're an idiot," Tulip tells Jesse.

"You're an idiot," Cassidy echoes, faithfully, no lack of amusement in the smile his face splits into. 

"I made you a promise," Jesse informs her, completely unabashed. "And you're the one who started this."

"Excuse me for _dying_ ," Tulip responds, somewhere between incredulous and offended that didn't quite hit on either.

"I guess." A heel comes down on his foot, hard, and Jesse smiles all the same. "Gonna show us around?"

There's another question in the question, the question of forgiveness. Tulip makes a show of sighing, but she takes Jesse's hand in one of hers, and Cassidy's in the other.

"I suppose someone has to," she tells them, making another show of rolling her eyes like it wasn't the first time anything had felt right in years.


	12. Epilogue

"I don't want you here," The Saint tells Jesse bluntly, but without making any move to rise from the Heavenly Throne after the three of them had been shepherded into the room not long after Tulip’s tour.

"So what's next?" Jesse wants to know, that same idle confidence still running through him. "Reincarnation? Hell again?"

"No," The Saint answers. "A job."

Jesse glances over his shoulder to where Tulip and Cassidy are waiting, his mouth pressed into a line and an eyebrow raised in entertainment before returning his attention to the man before him.

"I'm listening." 

There’s a moment before the Saint manages to speak again, and before it’s over Tulip is at his side, leaning against his arm. “Hope you brought enough for everyone,” she tells him, her smile bright.

Before she’s finished speaking Cassidy is already leaning on his other shoulder, and Jesse can barely make out his face to see the innocent look he’s trying on. “Not, of course, that we’re against sharing if you didn’t.”

Jesse would have said the Saint was scowling, if that hadn’t been his expression a moment ago. As it is, he tilts his head to the side as if to shrug. “My mistake,” he tells him smoothly, “make that _we’re_ listening.”


End file.
